Defining journalists and their rights

11:22 PM,
Jul. 7, 2013

cokie and steve roberts

Written by

Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts

Who is a journalist? What rules should protect reporters from excessive government efforts to track down their sources of information and compel their testimony in legal proceedings?

Those questions have taken center stage in Washington. They started emerging in May, with revelations that the Obama administration secretly sought the phone records of Associated Press reporters who had broken a story about a terrorist conspiracy in Yemen.

Then came the blowback. The president gave a speech saying, "I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative ...